Reveiwers: SamaraRose7 (Oh, poor you! Having a computer hog in the house? *Shudder* And I'm so glad you think I'm writing well! ^_^ Creepy is good, it's mostly what I'm aiming for. And happy [even more belated] Valentines to you too! Didja get you Cyber-plushie? *Points to the very end of last chapter* I hope you like it... ^_^), Kairi_hater (*Huggle* Sankyuu~! ^_^)
Warnings: Eh, normal creepyness factor, normal weirdness factor, and a little bit more than normal level of confusion around Aku...
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and other copyrighted things don't belong to me. Neko, Oni, Takeo, Anzu, most of the ENEG-tachi, Lani, and random side charries I made up as fillers do. Questions? Comments? Leave them in a reveiw, or e-mail me at alanadeckert@sio.midco.net (NOT Earthlink! That adress is no longer in use!) and expect a long wait while I bug Dad into fixing my Eudoura...
*******************
Experimental
Puppets: Part Two
Tell Me Of A Story
********************
Aku shakes Oni's head. "You didn't seem to protest this much when you arrived."
Shiru's eyes narrow even more. "I didn't know how cruely you were treating his emotions."
A bark of laughter. "And you probably wouldn't care, if it wasn't him. Is ore-sama right?"
Aku finds himself pinned against a pillar of dark energy by the irate Guide. "You have no real power here, Aku. Don't test me." The blood-copper eyes bore through the black cloth. "I am only trying to put everything into balance. Just because we are of a Book, does not mean I wouldn't do this for anyone else." The arm pinning Oni's body to the wall pulls back as the sneer drops from the pale, delicate face.
"Na-nani?..." One shaking hand fumbles at the knot of the blindfold, Shiru stepping away. "What happened?" Oni's pain is, truthfully... The same. Not milder, as from a Heartless victory, or deeper and tearing, as from Aku's will... The same. Although his neck hurts, unusually.
"Don't worry aboput it, Oni." Shiru steps where the pillar was, his hands delftly pulling the knot apart, the blindfold falling to the ground.
"Domo arigatou gozaimasu... I hate that thing." Oni notices that his hads are shaking as her bends to pick up the strip of cloth.
A swirl of energy surrounds it, Shiru pulling Oni back. "Don't bother. Hopefully, if I keep an eye on you, he won't use it anymore."
Oni nods. "Wakatta..."
Ansem taps Oni's shoulder, and the boy turns, looking up at the taller man.
"R.S.S.K.-"
"Oni."
"Oni, would you explain?"
"... I don't know if I can..."
********************
~~~~~ Graziar
Sora and Takeo walk.
Sora glances over his shoulder, at where the three distant figures have finally started moving again, then at Takeo, who almost seems to be listening to something else, and ahead, where the faint pull is coming from. And the two continue to walk.
"Err... Takeo?"
The boy glances towards Sora, then stares straight ahead. "Nani, otousan?"
"Do you... Do you know what we're doing?" Sora pokes tenderly at the subject.
"We're walking. Towards a person that seems to be pulling at us without realizing it."
"That's not what I mean."
"I know. But... I don't." Takeo stops, turning to Sora, their eyes meeting for the first time since their strange, abrupt first meeting. "I never thought of what I would do, if I met you. Well, no, that's not true. I thought you'd be grown up, married to the girl everyone who's met you both said you'd marry, living happily at- what was it- Destiny Island? - and with bushles of giggling kids. You'd hear my story, then kick me out of your home because I'd be a disturbance in Happily Ever After. Then you'd go off with wife and kids, and forget about me, and I'd go home, cry, get hugged by Seph and my sister, assuming she hadn't succeded in commiting suicide by then, go to bed, and continue training with a longsword in the morning." He shrugs, a ironic smile crossing his face. "I'm a pessimist. It comes from hanging around Sephiroth too much."
Sora glances away, the unwavering, unreadable aqua eyes uncomfortable to look into.
They continue walking, silence streching between them like an unnavigable river.
"Anou..."
Takeo's soft voice barely carries the few feet between them.
"You... really don't hate me, or anything?"
Sora shakes his head. "I don't hate you... You creep me out, a little, but I don't hate you, and I don't think I'd have justifacation, if I did."
"Isn't it enough..." Takeo glances out of the corner of his eye, then fixes his gaze back on the road. "Isn't the fact that Ansem created me enough to be hated?"
"Err..." Sora shakes his head, truly confused. "I don't see what that has to do with you, as a person. I mean, some of the best people I've known have been alley-children, or raised by gorrilas- so what does the fact that Ansem made a DNA cocktail of me n' Riku, and made you, got to do with anything?"
"..." A smile crosses Takeo's features, but Sora isn't looking. Still... "Domo arigatou, otousan."
"... What in all the worlds dis you just say?"
"Nothing, nothing at all." A long pause, uncomfortable, but not as unbreachable as before. "Only about another day of walking, and we'll meet up with this person. I'm curious to know who can reach us both, and pull at our... Our... Anou... Heart-strings?... Who can pull at our heart-strings so subtly, without realizing... I've only known one person who could even come close, and she's long dead."
********************
Another Dream.
For just a moment, a giant chess board flashes across Neko's mind...
The feeling of the Dream is... Diffrent. No longer tinged with that ever-familiar, gentle presence...
:: Miru can't help me here. Not anymore. ::
Neko is, for just a moment, very frightened.
:: But who's here now?!?! ::
Yes, there is a presence... Not so kind, so gentle, so reassuring...
^ Hello, child. ^
Neko awnsers reflexively to the crystaline brightness surrounding her; "I'm not a child anymore."
^ If you say so. Would you rather I called you kitten? ^
"Only Miru-san can call me that. If you must take his place as the director of my Dreams, call me Neko."
^ You don't seem all surprized by the transfer. ^
"Well, If Miru-san's here, he can't very well be there, ne?"
A startled flicker rings through the unsteady crystal space around her. She suddenly plunges into deep, black sleep, the silver fading quickly.
***
Across the hall from the room the two girls share, Miru's eyes snap open.
* I can feel you there, Mickey.*
/... Why didn't we realize where you had gone? /
* Because it was so obvious. *
A long silence stretches between them.
/ We need you, you know. We can't work without the Reader. /
* Yes you can. Right now, I need to be HERE, by my Kitten's side. If I can't help, she'll break. * A tense pause. * She's still going to break, eventually. But... I can still delay it. *
/ Can you, Miru? /
Nothing but echoing silence falls between them until Miru gives a terse reply- * My problem. Not yours. Leave. Now. *
Mickey sighs. / We've all changed so much, havn't we? I almost with things were like twenty years ago- But this was all necassary. /
* Was it, Mickey? Who says that She couldn't do this on Her own? Who's to say that we're all not just puppets, having our strings pulled by Her? I'm the Reader of the Pages. And I've read... many things. She could have fixed this Herself- She most likely will, if we fail. But She has a twisted sense of life- She'll throw us to the dogs, let our blood and darkness bleed out of our hearts, just for the laws of Her Nature. And... * Miru breaks off. * Just leave, Mickey. I can't talk of it to you. Even after all these years, you are too inoccent to face Her truth, whatever it may be. Just go out, find a temporary Reader for the Pages, if you must- Zeff is particuarly level-headed- But let me run my own way. I should at least deserve some freedom, after all these years of... *
***
King Mickey sighs as Miru's thought trails off, and the mouse breaks the temporary comunication-thread.
^ Well? ^
"I don't know, LP. He's... bitter. He's been thinking too much... Reading too deeply into the Pages." The king shakes his head. "That was the first thing he warned me of, those many years ago, when I first had to join. But..."
:: How would he know not to look too deeply- if he hadn't? ::
********************
~~~~~ Bastion
Lani sits on Neko's bed, feet swinging dejectedly against the side, a manilla folder in her small hands.
She opens the folder, shuffling through the scetches...
Finding the ones she was looking for, she lays out the Dream-drawings on the silver-toned comforter.
:: She said her dreams were hints of Fate, right? So she must have her fate in here... ::
The dark scribblings of unreal places, smears from where a pale hand rubbed over the charcoal, hold the unreality of someone not sure what they're drawing, but unable to try and sort them out...
In the first drawing, the long arc of an impssible huge cresent moon drifts over a ocean of crystals, the edges of the darkness rippling into feathers, a smudge of a red pigment adding the only color to the fingers of a sharp-nailed hand reaching onto the paper...
Staring at the picture, Lani sees that it had been a Dream with Neko's sister, one of the ones where she had woken up, tears in her gold-fringed eyes and a scream in her throat.
Lani shudders slightly, goes on to the next one.
Only a few lines mar the paper, smudged into a faint figure with darkened blurs from the back, the hands holding a small smudge of ruddy pigment and thick lines of chalk fluttering around the head. Along the bottom, a few kana in the red pigment forming a few words of Nihongo...
{ gomen nazai, aniki no usotsuki }
The chilling feeling coming over Lani makes her push the picture away.
Next, more dark landscapes, blurry smudges of blood- :: Red, just a pigment stick, not blood- :: framing everything in grim unreality.
The very bottom- :: The newest, Neko-senpai always puts her new drawings on the bottom- :: has a pale face, delicate, almost like Neko's, but eyes more sorrowful than hers even on a bad day.
{ boku no sei da }
{ iya, aniki, atashi no sei da }
"It's not either of your faults..." Lani whispers, tears in her eyes, fingers tracing the red kana a shade above the paper. "It never was..."
********************
Ore-sama: That mega-egotistical first-person pronoun...
Domo arigatou gozaimasu: Thank you very much. (Domo means 'very')
Nani: What?
Wakatta: Understood/ I understand.
Otousan: Father, fairly respectful with the honorable 'O' and the suffix '-san'
Anou: Umm...
-san: ... You know this by now, right?
Kana: Katakana or hiragana, the Japanese symbols to represent sounds, as compared to kanji, symbols to represent entire words.
Gomen nazai, aniki no usotsuki: Lesse if we can work through this one together! ^_^ Gomen nazai means 'I'm sorry', ne? And we know 'aniki' is an informal way to say 'older brother', and by now most people have figured out that 'no' is a posseive/attibute marker. So the only new word is 'usotsuki', which means liar. So, put together, it's "I'm sorry, liar brother".
-senpai: A suffix I dont use often- once before in this story, actually. ^^;; A peculiarity of Lani's. -Senpai is probably what you'd use for a classmate you didn't know well, or someone only a few rungs higher than you on the social ladder. Polite, but not to the extreme...
Boku no sei da: It Is my fault. (Boku= -polite, masculine- my, sei= fault)
Iya, aniki, atashi no sei da: No, older brother, it's my fault. ( Iya= -Informal- no, aniki= -informal- older brother, atashi= -polite, feminine- my, sei= fault)
********************
Konichiwa or ohayou or konbanwa or whatever greeting works for whenever you're reading this... Sorry about late-ness. ^^;; First no time, then sick, then girl-stuff, then a combo of some sort of bug and girl-stuff, then my first cavity and filling thereof, leaving one cheek and half my mouth numb... And some beyond-good-and-rather-overly-long fanfics, including a cute Harry Potter fanfic written by someone who actually lives in England and highly reccomended by someone who doesn't even particuarly like the pairing and an extended Soujiro-goes-off-traveling-and-finds-some-happiness-and-then-has-bad-stuff-happen-and-will-henceforth-be-reffered-to-as-poor-Sou-chan thing... Oi~! I love this song! *Sings with the radio* ~ We didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning! We didn't start the fire, no we didn't light it but we tried to fight it! ~ *Gets smacked by mou hitori no Alana* ORO~! @_@
Mou Hitori no Alana: Baka. -_- Either make a point or shut up.
*Sticks her tounge out* Meanie. Well, not really any points I can make... Except that Evanesence has UNFAIRLY good music, and their song "My Immortal" fits too well into this fanfic... And I keep on running into the word 'Oni' everywhere I turn... *Glares at certain games, shows, fanfics, ect...* Oh! And I HIGHLY reccomend the anime/manga Naruto, especially the anime. My friend John got a fan-subbed version off the 'net somewhere, and I LOVE it! *Huggles Naruto* Kawaii little youko-sealed-inside-of perverted ninja... =^_^=
Well, that's pretty much it... Oh! And if you ever get a chance to see the King Singers, DO SO. They RULE. The best part is the VERY end, though, where they'll do 'Penny Lane' and 'There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly' and such... ^^ Funny!
Well, ja ne, and don't forget to reveiw~! ^^
~ Alana Hikari-chan
Warnings: Eh, normal creepyness factor, normal weirdness factor, and a little bit more than normal level of confusion around Aku...
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and other copyrighted things don't belong to me. Neko, Oni, Takeo, Anzu, most of the ENEG-tachi, Lani, and random side charries I made up as fillers do. Questions? Comments? Leave them in a reveiw, or e-mail me at alanadeckert@sio.midco.net (NOT Earthlink! That adress is no longer in use!) and expect a long wait while I bug Dad into fixing my Eudoura...
*******************
Experimental
Puppets: Part Two
Tell Me Of A Story
********************
Aku shakes Oni's head. "You didn't seem to protest this much when you arrived."
Shiru's eyes narrow even more. "I didn't know how cruely you were treating his emotions."
A bark of laughter. "And you probably wouldn't care, if it wasn't him. Is ore-sama right?"
Aku finds himself pinned against a pillar of dark energy by the irate Guide. "You have no real power here, Aku. Don't test me." The blood-copper eyes bore through the black cloth. "I am only trying to put everything into balance. Just because we are of a Book, does not mean I wouldn't do this for anyone else." The arm pinning Oni's body to the wall pulls back as the sneer drops from the pale, delicate face.
"Na-nani?..." One shaking hand fumbles at the knot of the blindfold, Shiru stepping away. "What happened?" Oni's pain is, truthfully... The same. Not milder, as from a Heartless victory, or deeper and tearing, as from Aku's will... The same. Although his neck hurts, unusually.
"Don't worry aboput it, Oni." Shiru steps where the pillar was, his hands delftly pulling the knot apart, the blindfold falling to the ground.
"Domo arigatou gozaimasu... I hate that thing." Oni notices that his hads are shaking as her bends to pick up the strip of cloth.
A swirl of energy surrounds it, Shiru pulling Oni back. "Don't bother. Hopefully, if I keep an eye on you, he won't use it anymore."
Oni nods. "Wakatta..."
Ansem taps Oni's shoulder, and the boy turns, looking up at the taller man.
"R.S.S.K.-"
"Oni."
"Oni, would you explain?"
"... I don't know if I can..."
********************
~~~~~ Graziar
Sora and Takeo walk.
Sora glances over his shoulder, at where the three distant figures have finally started moving again, then at Takeo, who almost seems to be listening to something else, and ahead, where the faint pull is coming from. And the two continue to walk.
"Err... Takeo?"
The boy glances towards Sora, then stares straight ahead. "Nani, otousan?"
"Do you... Do you know what we're doing?" Sora pokes tenderly at the subject.
"We're walking. Towards a person that seems to be pulling at us without realizing it."
"That's not what I mean."
"I know. But... I don't." Takeo stops, turning to Sora, their eyes meeting for the first time since their strange, abrupt first meeting. "I never thought of what I would do, if I met you. Well, no, that's not true. I thought you'd be grown up, married to the girl everyone who's met you both said you'd marry, living happily at- what was it- Destiny Island? - and with bushles of giggling kids. You'd hear my story, then kick me out of your home because I'd be a disturbance in Happily Ever After. Then you'd go off with wife and kids, and forget about me, and I'd go home, cry, get hugged by Seph and my sister, assuming she hadn't succeded in commiting suicide by then, go to bed, and continue training with a longsword in the morning." He shrugs, a ironic smile crossing his face. "I'm a pessimist. It comes from hanging around Sephiroth too much."
Sora glances away, the unwavering, unreadable aqua eyes uncomfortable to look into.
They continue walking, silence streching between them like an unnavigable river.
"Anou..."
Takeo's soft voice barely carries the few feet between them.
"You... really don't hate me, or anything?"
Sora shakes his head. "I don't hate you... You creep me out, a little, but I don't hate you, and I don't think I'd have justifacation, if I did."
"Isn't it enough..." Takeo glances out of the corner of his eye, then fixes his gaze back on the road. "Isn't the fact that Ansem created me enough to be hated?"
"Err..." Sora shakes his head, truly confused. "I don't see what that has to do with you, as a person. I mean, some of the best people I've known have been alley-children, or raised by gorrilas- so what does the fact that Ansem made a DNA cocktail of me n' Riku, and made you, got to do with anything?"
"..." A smile crosses Takeo's features, but Sora isn't looking. Still... "Domo arigatou, otousan."
"... What in all the worlds dis you just say?"
"Nothing, nothing at all." A long pause, uncomfortable, but not as unbreachable as before. "Only about another day of walking, and we'll meet up with this person. I'm curious to know who can reach us both, and pull at our... Our... Anou... Heart-strings?... Who can pull at our heart-strings so subtly, without realizing... I've only known one person who could even come close, and she's long dead."
********************
Another Dream.
For just a moment, a giant chess board flashes across Neko's mind...
The feeling of the Dream is... Diffrent. No longer tinged with that ever-familiar, gentle presence...
:: Miru can't help me here. Not anymore. ::
Neko is, for just a moment, very frightened.
:: But who's here now?!?! ::
Yes, there is a presence... Not so kind, so gentle, so reassuring...
^ Hello, child. ^
Neko awnsers reflexively to the crystaline brightness surrounding her; "I'm not a child anymore."
^ If you say so. Would you rather I called you kitten? ^
"Only Miru-san can call me that. If you must take his place as the director of my Dreams, call me Neko."
^ You don't seem all surprized by the transfer. ^
"Well, If Miru-san's here, he can't very well be there, ne?"
A startled flicker rings through the unsteady crystal space around her. She suddenly plunges into deep, black sleep, the silver fading quickly.
***
Across the hall from the room the two girls share, Miru's eyes snap open.
* I can feel you there, Mickey.*
/... Why didn't we realize where you had gone? /
* Because it was so obvious. *
A long silence stretches between them.
/ We need you, you know. We can't work without the Reader. /
* Yes you can. Right now, I need to be HERE, by my Kitten's side. If I can't help, she'll break. * A tense pause. * She's still going to break, eventually. But... I can still delay it. *
/ Can you, Miru? /
Nothing but echoing silence falls between them until Miru gives a terse reply- * My problem. Not yours. Leave. Now. *
Mickey sighs. / We've all changed so much, havn't we? I almost with things were like twenty years ago- But this was all necassary. /
* Was it, Mickey? Who says that She couldn't do this on Her own? Who's to say that we're all not just puppets, having our strings pulled by Her? I'm the Reader of the Pages. And I've read... many things. She could have fixed this Herself- She most likely will, if we fail. But She has a twisted sense of life- She'll throw us to the dogs, let our blood and darkness bleed out of our hearts, just for the laws of Her Nature. And... * Miru breaks off. * Just leave, Mickey. I can't talk of it to you. Even after all these years, you are too inoccent to face Her truth, whatever it may be. Just go out, find a temporary Reader for the Pages, if you must- Zeff is particuarly level-headed- But let me run my own way. I should at least deserve some freedom, after all these years of... *
***
King Mickey sighs as Miru's thought trails off, and the mouse breaks the temporary comunication-thread.
^ Well? ^
"I don't know, LP. He's... bitter. He's been thinking too much... Reading too deeply into the Pages." The king shakes his head. "That was the first thing he warned me of, those many years ago, when I first had to join. But..."
:: How would he know not to look too deeply- if he hadn't? ::
********************
~~~~~ Bastion
Lani sits on Neko's bed, feet swinging dejectedly against the side, a manilla folder in her small hands.
She opens the folder, shuffling through the scetches...
Finding the ones she was looking for, she lays out the Dream-drawings on the silver-toned comforter.
:: She said her dreams were hints of Fate, right? So she must have her fate in here... ::
The dark scribblings of unreal places, smears from where a pale hand rubbed over the charcoal, hold the unreality of someone not sure what they're drawing, but unable to try and sort them out...
In the first drawing, the long arc of an impssible huge cresent moon drifts over a ocean of crystals, the edges of the darkness rippling into feathers, a smudge of a red pigment adding the only color to the fingers of a sharp-nailed hand reaching onto the paper...
Staring at the picture, Lani sees that it had been a Dream with Neko's sister, one of the ones where she had woken up, tears in her gold-fringed eyes and a scream in her throat.
Lani shudders slightly, goes on to the next one.
Only a few lines mar the paper, smudged into a faint figure with darkened blurs from the back, the hands holding a small smudge of ruddy pigment and thick lines of chalk fluttering around the head. Along the bottom, a few kana in the red pigment forming a few words of Nihongo...
{ gomen nazai, aniki no usotsuki }
The chilling feeling coming over Lani makes her push the picture away.
Next, more dark landscapes, blurry smudges of blood- :: Red, just a pigment stick, not blood- :: framing everything in grim unreality.
The very bottom- :: The newest, Neko-senpai always puts her new drawings on the bottom- :: has a pale face, delicate, almost like Neko's, but eyes more sorrowful than hers even on a bad day.
{ boku no sei da }
{ iya, aniki, atashi no sei da }
"It's not either of your faults..." Lani whispers, tears in her eyes, fingers tracing the red kana a shade above the paper. "It never was..."
********************
Ore-sama: That mega-egotistical first-person pronoun...
Domo arigatou gozaimasu: Thank you very much. (Domo means 'very')
Nani: What?
Wakatta: Understood/ I understand.
Otousan: Father, fairly respectful with the honorable 'O' and the suffix '-san'
Anou: Umm...
-san: ... You know this by now, right?
Kana: Katakana or hiragana, the Japanese symbols to represent sounds, as compared to kanji, symbols to represent entire words.
Gomen nazai, aniki no usotsuki: Lesse if we can work through this one together! ^_^ Gomen nazai means 'I'm sorry', ne? And we know 'aniki' is an informal way to say 'older brother', and by now most people have figured out that 'no' is a posseive/attibute marker. So the only new word is 'usotsuki', which means liar. So, put together, it's "I'm sorry, liar brother".
-senpai: A suffix I dont use often- once before in this story, actually. ^^;; A peculiarity of Lani's. -Senpai is probably what you'd use for a classmate you didn't know well, or someone only a few rungs higher than you on the social ladder. Polite, but not to the extreme...
Boku no sei da: It Is my fault. (Boku= -polite, masculine- my, sei= fault)
Iya, aniki, atashi no sei da: No, older brother, it's my fault. ( Iya= -Informal- no, aniki= -informal- older brother, atashi= -polite, feminine- my, sei= fault)
********************
Konichiwa or ohayou or konbanwa or whatever greeting works for whenever you're reading this... Sorry about late-ness. ^^;; First no time, then sick, then girl-stuff, then a combo of some sort of bug and girl-stuff, then my first cavity and filling thereof, leaving one cheek and half my mouth numb... And some beyond-good-and-rather-overly-long fanfics, including a cute Harry Potter fanfic written by someone who actually lives in England and highly reccomended by someone who doesn't even particuarly like the pairing and an extended Soujiro-goes-off-traveling-and-finds-some-happiness-and-then-has-bad-stuff-happen-and-will-henceforth-be-reffered-to-as-poor-Sou-chan thing... Oi~! I love this song! *Sings with the radio* ~ We didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning! We didn't start the fire, no we didn't light it but we tried to fight it! ~ *Gets smacked by mou hitori no Alana* ORO~! @_@
Mou Hitori no Alana: Baka. -_- Either make a point or shut up.
*Sticks her tounge out* Meanie. Well, not really any points I can make... Except that Evanesence has UNFAIRLY good music, and their song "My Immortal" fits too well into this fanfic... And I keep on running into the word 'Oni' everywhere I turn... *Glares at certain games, shows, fanfics, ect...* Oh! And I HIGHLY reccomend the anime/manga Naruto, especially the anime. My friend John got a fan-subbed version off the 'net somewhere, and I LOVE it! *Huggles Naruto* Kawaii little youko-sealed-inside-of perverted ninja... =^_^=
Well, that's pretty much it... Oh! And if you ever get a chance to see the King Singers, DO SO. They RULE. The best part is the VERY end, though, where they'll do 'Penny Lane' and 'There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly' and such... ^^ Funny!
Well, ja ne, and don't forget to reveiw~! ^^
~ Alana Hikari-chan
